Google has finally bent to the conventions established over the last 20 years of operating system design and updated ChromeOS to look more like Windows and the Mac, complete with a desktop and icons and a taskbar for applications.

ChromeOS was designed for cheap laptop computers called Chromebooks, and one most interesting points was the design: instead of working like a regular operating system, it was basically a version of Google's Chrome browser that took up the entire screen.

All apps ran inside the browser in tabs. There was no desktop, no visible file system -- none of the stuff that computer users have taken for granted since the early 1990s.

With the new design, apps still run in tabs. But you can open multiple browser windows at once, drag them around the screen, and launch apps from icons on the desktop and taskbar.

Google's goal with Chrome was to solve some of the problems Windows on cheap netbooks -- ChromeOS starts almost immediately, apps open faster and run more efficiently (as long as you have an Internet connection), and the company claims that the apps are more secure as well.

But between the time ChromeOS was hatched in 2008 and its release last year, the netbook market was destroyed by the iPad, and Google has been pushing Android for tablets instead of ChromeOS.

Perhaps Google is hoping to give ChromeOS a second life on tablets: the specs for the redesign (which is codenamed Aura) say it's supposed to "Provide the foundation of a flexible windowing system and shell for Chrome and ChromeOS on a variety of form factors." [emphasis ours]

The few people who bought a Chromebook from Samsung or Acer can get the update, but it's not available for the CR-48, the test Chromebooks that Google put out early last year.